Thousands of local and international Christian pilgrims thronged to Jerusalem's Old City and the Church of the Holy Sepulcher for the ancient Eastern rite ceremony of the Holy Fire April 15, with some scuffles reported as Israeli police restricted the number of people able to reach the church.

The priest-director of the Cultural Heritage Office for the Custodia Terrae Sanctae, or Custody of the Holy Land, in Jerusalem opened a drawer of vestments and casually dropped an unexpected historical tidbit about a clerical chasuble he was showing a group of foreign guests. The chasuble was part of a collection of vestments the archbishop of Paris wore for the marriage of Emperor Napoleon III of France with the Empress Eugenie, and which the empress later donated to the Church in the Holy Land.

One of Israel������Ƶapp leading archeologists working on the Pilgrimage Road excavation near Jerusalem������Ƶapp Temple Mount said that with so much new construction underway around the Holy City the rush is on to document and preserve the past before it������Ƶapp too late.

JERUSALEM -- Walk down St. Peter Street from the Old City������Ƶapp New Gate, past some shuttered shops and the closed Knight������Ƶapp Palace hotel, continue down through the winding stone-paved alleyway of the Christian Quarter and soon you will hit “Santa Lane.”

JERUSALEM -- When the Israeli Ministry of Health asked St. Joseph's Hospital to set up a coronavirus unit, the hospital had it completed within a week.

JERUSALEM (CNA) -- Peace, mutual equality, and respect must be the foundation of progress in Israeli-Palestinian relations, despite continued setbacks, the Assembly of Catholic Ordinaries of the Holy Land said this week.

JERUSALEM - For four decades, Mousa Kamar has taken his place at the head of the heavy wooden cross used during the Franciscan Good Friday procession on the Via Dolorosa.